Some few months later I was asked by the lady just mentioned if I should object to meeting Henry Halifax at dinner next evening.
"Not at all," was my answer. In fact, I felt it might be part of some psychic plan that I should do so. Evidently this was not the case, for at the last moment a telegram came to his hostess to say he was unexpectedly prevented from returning to town.
So we have never met at all! But I trust the confession may have been as efficacious as Mrs Levret was told that it would be. Anyway, I can testify that the gentleman in question is now happily married, and, therefore, presumably no longer haunted by the revengeful spirit, who has long since, let us trust, found happiness and peace in a higher world than this.
Speaking of haunting by the so-called dead reminds me of haunting by the so-called living.
In this same year (1896) I was staying in Cambridge for the first time in my life.
Oxford I have known since girlhood, but this was my first visit to the Sister University; needless to say, however, that I have met many men who have graduated there. Not knowing the town of Cambridge myself, I had never made it a subject of discussion, and ten years ago I was not even aware that such a street as Trumpington Street existed, difficult as it may be for Cambridge people to credit this statement.
In any case, most emphatically, I did not know that a very old friend of mine, who became later in life a judge, had ever lived in this street.
Having been a sailor in youth, he had gone up to Cambridge comparatively late; this was shortly before my acquaintance with him began.
Not knowing Cambridge at all, the question of where he lived there had never entered into our conversations together. Probably I took it for granted that he was living in his college (Peterhouse). The strong feeling of friendship between us had become a warmer sentiment on his side, and this led later, and inevitably, to a thorough break in our pleasant relations with each other.